1. I'm in charge of cocktails and dressing for Thanksgiving dinner at Carol and Paul's and today I fixed the cornbread I'll use in the dressing so it can dry out and I bought what I need for our Thanksgiving premeal cocktail. The cocktail will be one I've never made before, but it's simple, and I'm keeping it a surprise just for the heck of it. The cocktail is not special, has no meaning or history, but I like it to be a mystery.
2. Roger P. texted me today and asked what I thought of the upcoming Oregon/St. Mary's game. I told him I thought the Ducks were out of sorts with all their new players, that this early in the season they hadn't come together yet as a team in contrast to St. Mary's, a team composed of all returning players. I told him I thought St. Mary's might very well chalk up a win for their team and for the West Coast Conference.
It turns out I was correct. The Ducks struggled tonight to get into any kind of flow on offense and their early season lack of cohesion carried over to their defense, too. St. Mary's was the much sharper team and they defeated Oregon, 62-50.
After the Oregon game, I joined the rest of the nation's college basketball fans to watch Gonzaga play UCLA.
Toward the end of the first half, Byrdman asked Terry T. and me to share out thoughts about the game and I told him that I was having a halftime party with Debbie. Well, that halftime party turned into a party that was so fun that I never returned to the game, but checked the score on line a few times to make sure nothing major or miraculous happened in the second half.
So, my thoughts about the game are confined to the first half.
My thoughts as the first half unfolded began with Drew Timme.
When Gonzaga played Texas on November 13th, their whole offense went through Timme. He was being covered by one Longhorn in the post and this approach to defending him was futile and, by game's end, Timme scored 37 points. Gonzaga then played a short string of lesser opponents after the Texas game and Timme played fewer minutes, didn't get as many touches inside, and more players got involved in the Zags' offense.
I figured that tonight, against such a high quality team as UCLA, the Zags would go back to what worked so well against Texas and would run their offense through Timme again.
That didn't happen. Instead, Gonzaga demonstrated that its squad is very versatile with plenty of firepower across their starting five and on into their bench.
Timme had relatively few touches in the first half, only took five shots from the floor, and scored only a handful of points.
His teammates, however, were scoring from all points of the compass.
The Zags played swarming defense. They turned UCLA over several times. Chet Holmgren either blocked or affected UCLA's shots inside. UCLA's experienced and usually sharp shooting veterans seemed rattled, nervous, and missed a high volume of shots and Gonzaga's shooters were hitting a high percentage of their shots, scoring in the paint, sometimes on layups, hitting three pointers, all with relatively minimal contributions from Drew Timme.
Byrdman texted me that UCLA seemed nervous. I responded, "so did Texas".
One of the reasons I find it difficult to imagine how a game like this will take shape is that I don't know how, on the mental or emotional level, one team will affect the other.
It's a small sample size, but if Gonzaga's presence rattled Texas and UCLA, making both experienced teams nervous, it would seem that the Zags are, to some degree, intimidating to their opponents.
Last season, I saw this happen when the strong physical eventual national champions Baylor played. Baylor's quickness, physicality, and sharp shooting intimidated opponents.
I have to admit, though, that I have never thought of Gonzaga in this way, as intimidating.
It's early in the season. As teams improve and gain confidence, they might be less nervous playing the Zags. I don't know. All I do know is that I would never have predicted that UCLA would have had to battle not only the Zags tonight, but their own nerves.
Ha! What do I know?
I didn't watch the second half thanks to mixing myself a very good martini and yakkin' with Debbie.
What impressed me most in the first half, though, was Gonzaga's versatility. Tonight, they proved themselves a multi-dimensional team: quick and persistent on defense, able to protect the rim inside, a sound rebounding team, fast, skilled, and unselfish in the open court, and able to score points on offense in the paint and from long range. Gonzaga converted 39% of their three pointers, as close as they've been lately to the magic 40% mark and made nearly 80% of their free throws, another improvement.
Am I ready on November 23rd with over three months left in this season to crown Gonzaga as national champions in April?
Hardly.
And since I don't care about the weekly polls, don't care that tonight the Zags solidified their #1 ranking, with Duke looming ahead on Friday, I am hardly ready to claim that Gonzaga is the nation's best team.
That's decided on the court, not by rankings, and I want to watch and enjoy games, not spend time thinking about votes and who's #1 in a poll.
That said, Gonzaga's performance tonight in the first half was stellar.
I enjoyed it a lot.
3. I also enjoyed partying with Debbie! I mixed Debbie some Buffalo Trace Bourbon with Cointreau and orange bitters, made myself a dry gin martini, and we gabbed about family stuff, our kids back east and their Thanksgiving plans, and had fun talking about how much we enjoyed living in Maryland with all of its variety, beauty, and complexity. Talking about Maryland came up because I had made a few nostalgic comments about life and friends in Eugene and that led us to talk about what a transformative decision it was when we decided to leave Eugene. Living in Maryland opened up experiences for us that were fun and stimulating, others that were difficult and frustrating in ways different than we'd ever known. How could I leave this conversation to return to a basketball game? Ha! I couldn't and before long we were not only talking about the past and our love of Maryland, but about the near future and what might lie ahead for our future enjoyment.
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